Proudly Canadian - Week 214 - May 25 - June 1

Reddit tricked me with an old link.  Oh well, I'm sticking with it because we haven't had a photo in a while.  Hey guys!  I got me a panderin' license!

6,000 aboriginal children may have died under the Residential School system.  That's a shocking, shocking number.

We plunged in to a war against ISIS a year ago with little thought or planning.  And amazingly, we're worse off now than when we started.

The RCMP thinks you might be at terrorist if you're protesting the Big Brother act.

This article is titled "Have the Tories' electoral changes remade our democracy for the better?".  And then goes on to list all the things they've done to make democracy worse.  So I don't really get it.

The PMO feels the need to approve any request for a public meeting.  Any public meeting with Federal Government involvement.  Or at least a Federal Government logo.

I guess when you put out this many promotional videos, some things are liable to slip through the cracks.  Including highlighting an assembly line that will be moved to the US.

 

Lovely.  An educator attempts to educate a group of military cadets about sexual assault.  Is catcalled and harassed.  Reports it.  And is harassed via e-mail for reporting it.

The Victoria terror trial descends further into sideshow.  The Judge declares there was nearly a mistrial due to the absurd closing argument from the prosecution.

Vice explains how the transparency watchdog is being starved and ignored.

I think it is awesome that a First Nation took the time and money to do their own detailed study on the Kinder Morgan expansion.  Surprisingly...they don't exactly agree with what Kinder Morgan or the government have been selling.

U-S-A!  U-S-A!  When there's sports scandals to prosecute, we know who to call!  Lance Armstrong.  Barry Bonds.  Now FIFA.  Don't worry about those guys who almost ruined the world in 2008 though.

Political ploy, yes.  But kind of awesome.  Liberal bill to unmuzzle scientists.

Conservatives don't want it.  The City of Ottawa doesn't want it.  But the Victims of Communism Memorial will probably go ahead anyhow.

Canada blocks a UN plan to ride the world of nukes.  Because Israel needs them.  Won't admit to having them...but needs them.

Joe Oliver wants us to voluntarily put more money into our government run pension plan that he doesn't want to fund.  Ya.  Okay.

Temporary Foreign Workers.  Also unable to do anything when sexually harassed at work.

Omar Khadr finally speaks.

I used to think Peter McKay was one of the good ones.  Long ago.  I no longer think that.  Good riddance.

Trapped in the Closet - Week 183 - Oct 27 - Nov 3

Stephen Harper feels bad that he hid in the closet.  I actually don't blame him for that.  

We're officially arguing over the semantics of the word "terrorism".  Mulcair thinks that because the man was mentally ill, it might not be terrorism.  Russell Brand points out that when a white guy shoots 3 cops, that's not terrorism.  Which makes me a bit sad.  This isn't even his country.  How does he come up with these amazingly relevant things to say?

The Information and Privacy Commissioners are encouraging us to not over-react with draconian laws in the wake of last weeks incidents.

I love that we're using domestic attacks by Canadian citizens who never left the country to justify a global spying enterprise.  Among other things.

I always root for the underdog.  I have no idea why.  I can't remember the last time that a team that I cheered for won a major championship.  Hell, half the time I'll switch allegiances if my underdog team starts winning.  So,today we'll talk about Dean Del Mastro.  Don't get me wrong, this man deserves no sympathy.  But I can't help but feel a bit sorry for him as all his buddies skitter away and leave him holding the bag.  How does Steve not get tarnished by all the buffoons that he has surrounded himself with?

How badly does the RCMP suck?  In Stephen Harper's Canada, the RCMP thinks that environmentalists are a greater threat than "religiously inspired terrorists".  That must have been some argument, trying to sort out which Boogieman is scarier.  As well, the RCMP have kept no records of their warrantless requests to snoop on Canadians, so have no idea how often it happened or if it breached privacy.  Lastly, it looks like up to 4 RCMP officers slept with witnesses over the course of the Surrey Six investigation and trial, throwing the verdict into question.  Four!

Canada won't be granting visas to people from "Ebola ridden countries".  Many people point out that this won't stop the disease from spreading.

Because it's nearly impossible to achieve one legally, women in New Brunswick are inducing their own abortions.

We don't have the budget to build all the arctic ships we are expecting to.

Income Tax Splitting could be really, really messy.  A dream for accountants.  We know that income splitting favours people that have high incomes.  So limiting the tax credit to $2000 is a step in the right direction.  But why is it limited to people with kids?

This is really embarrassing.  We've started photoshopping logos onto the Canadarm.

The overall best selling car.  In all of Norway.  Is the Tesla Model S.  Some people point out that it is hypocritical of Norway to make buying a Tesla cheap through funding provided by their Oil industry.  But I think that's awesome.  If Canada decided to jack oil and gas royalties and use it to fund clean energy programs, that would be a good thing, no?

An opposition Commander in Syria points out that 6 fighter jets isn't going to accomplish much against ISIS.  Biased opinion?  Sure.  Mysterious source?  Of course.

You know who doesn't have confusion about whether or not to buy in to an overly expensive, unproven fighter jet program?  Russia.  That's who.

Buried way, way in the back of an already long bill are some provisions to control working conditions within the CBC.

Hooray for Canada?  A student staged a fake act of racism and filmed it as a social experiment.  Somebody sucker punched the fake racist.  Somebody else pointed out that Islam isn't a race.

It's official.  Communication from Revenue Canada makes no sense.

This is a really great cartoon that explains Obamacare and what is wrong with US Healthcare.

Every once in a while, an issue comes along that is so confusing, you're not even sure which side you are on.  #Gamergate is just such a thing.  If you use that hashtag are you a sexist?  Against sexism?  What if you're criticizing #Gamergate?  Are you allowed to use the hashtag then?  Who the fuck knows.  Anyhow, this post is beautiful.  Not just for #Gamergate, for life.  Read it.

Fur Hats for Everyone - Week 179 - Sept 29 - Oct 6

This is just a perfect example of the Harper Government.  We've got accusations of extremism.  Overturning somebody else's decision because you know better.  Grandstanding.  Killing animals.  Jobs!  Jobs!  Jobs!  It's perfect, really.  The Conservatives decide to overrule the RCMP's decision to no longer wear fur hats.  Claim it's for the greater good of Canada.  Congratulate themselves for saving...like what?  10 jobs?  And stick it to the extremists, for good measure.

Jim Prentice feels like all Alberta really needs right now is a few more temporary foreign workers.  Seriously.  What an asshole.  I know this isn't science or anything...but a year ago all the Oil Sands companies were advertising for engineers in BC.  Now?  Not a one.  I'm not surprised that our CEO/worker pay gap is the worst in the western world.  Well...except for America.  And some more stories about TFW's getting taken advantage of.

Does anybody out there have a really good idea for how to deal with ISIS?  At this rate, I feel like if we go in and take them out it's going to be some kind of flesh eating zombies that take their place.  The west just keeps making shit worse.  Maybe blowing the fuck out of everybody isn't the answer?  But no, Trudeau is the asshole here for questioning things.

Somebody decided that there would need to be a prison lockdown if Omar Khadr is granted an interview.

Sometimes you make a mistake, admit that you're wrong, and then move on.  Other times you double down on awful.  The Harper Government decides to appeal the decision that struck down their cuts to refugee health care.

This story details the impossible decision members of our military face.  Admit that you have a mental health problem and get treatment...or keep quiet and keep your pension.

MacLeans has a take on the Paul Calandra affair.  And some more about stupid things he has said.

The Conservatives don't want a motion to go forward that would grant the speaker the power to make people answer questions.  This is all kinds of confusing.

Once again, the Cons explanations for spending a lot of money beg greater explanation.  There's no real logic towards last minute changes leading to Canada footing the bill for a private plane ride home for some European bureaucrats.

Stephen Harper's "Ra Ra Canada is Great so let's stick it to the Russians" Franklin expedition to enhance Canadian ownership of the North...had a Russian component to it.  Which kind of chips away at the justification for it.

We now basically have one newspaper owner in Canada.  Good thing nobody reads them any longer.

And lastly...Sun news apologizes to Justin Trudeau for calling his mom a whore.  Basically.

Supremely Odd - Week 157 - April 28-May 5

My favourite headline of the week: Arrested woman throws poop at officers

Steve-O is starting to play dirty with the Supreme Court.  Out of nowhere, he brings up an "inappropriate phone call" from the Chief Justice.  Never mind that a distinguished law professor has pointed out that there wouldn't be a problem with this call.  Never mind that the Chief Justice denies that this ever happened.  The base is happy that they have an explanation now.

The RCMP is indicated that there may be as many as 1,000 murdered aboriginal women across the country?  The Conservatives refuse a public inquiry.  Not only that, they scrubbed the recommendations for a public inquiry from a Parliament report.

Government consultation has suggested that Canadians want the Economic Action Plan Ads to stop.

Stephen Harper blames those rascally voters.  Some of them have no intention of producing ID at the polls.  I guess if you're an untrustworthy bastard, you assume everybody else is too.

Data leaks by telcos to government agencies reach insane levels.  Millions of (mostly warrantless) requests for data each year.  Take note...government spying in the US just resulted in Brazil taking their fighter plane money elsewhere.

 The RCMP didn't even bother to consult with a public prosecutor over the Nigel Wright case.  They did talk to provincial prosecutors.

The Conservatives have set it up so that corporate sponsors are paying for part of the upcoming "Day of Honour" for soldiers?

A nice rundown of bureaucrats that have spoken out against the Harper Government.  Summary: It seldom ends well for their life as a government employee.

It's a story that Elections Canada had to pay a former judge to review their investigation into the robocalls scandal?  Somebody should have done it for free?

What the fuck?  The feds announce that job ready immigrants will be given preference.  Now BC is re-tooling it's school system to create worker drones for the upcoming job shortage revolution?  On the surface, yes, it makes sense to prepare kids for the future, and the future usually requires working for the man in some way, shape or form.  But this borders on insane.  This borders on the government being nothing more than the enabler for companies to make huge amounts of money.  But we have to have workers to execute the fracking plan that Environment Canada warns is moving way, way too fast, right?

The CBC lays out the history and issues of the Temporary Foreign Worker program.  And Jason Kenney explodes on twitter after Bob Rae insults him.  He also thinks that the Liberals or NDP can't criticize the program because they've helped some of their constituents use the program (we've heard this before).  All of a sudden, Stephen Harper is a champion for the Canadian worker, warning employers abusing the Temporary Foreign Worker program that he won't stand for the abuse that he allowed any longer.

There's a really weird story here:  A Polish newspaper donated a free ad to Eve Adams and suggested she is already the MP for the riding she is contesting.  Of course, it's not her fault.

Shawn Atleo resigns.  I have not idea what this means.

50 troops off to fight the Russians.  6 airplanes (that may not be armed).  1 boat.  50 troops.

Embarrass the RCMP, face charges for assaulting an RCMP officer.

A Canadian aid group has been branded a terrorist organization and had it's offices raided over support for Hamas.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Hamas now a part of the legitimate government in Palestine?  So couldn't any organization working in Palestine be levelled with similar charges?  Regardless, the group denies any support of Hamas.

The government doesn't seem to be taking the job of filling vacant scientists positions seriously.  Why bother hiring good scientists if you're only going to muzzle them, I guess.

The NHL has a noticeable impact on the overall Canadian economy.

This is beyond awesome.  A group of Satanists have commissioned a statue for the front of the Oklahoma Statehouse.  Their response to threats against the monument?  Their insurance may allow them to build two if this one is damaged.  It's like a video game villain or something.  Kill one, two come back in its place.

Let's end on a depressing note.  The Cons seemed to be bouncing back in the polls.

Tough times for the RCMP - Week 94 - Feb 12-18

A report came out early this week that suggested that the RCMP was raping and abusing women in Northern BC.  The report stresses that it's not every member of the RCMP, but a few bad apples.  Really bad apples.  The National Post isn't buying it.

I'm not sure the Prime Minister is, either.  "Let them eat cake" says the Prime Minister.  No.  Wait.  "Let them file reports" says the Prime Minister.  So...you know.  Walk in to the RCMP detachment and file your report that they raped you.  Seems logical.

And then a day later, another report is released with bad news for the RCMP.  This time, bullying and sexual harassment.  Ya.  Nothing new.

And then...Another RCMP "difficulty".  An officer faces child sex charges.

They're not the only bad cops out there though.  Details are coming out about the random people the LAPD shot in search of the cop killing ex-cop.  It touches on a couple of thoughts.  First, police feel as if they are above the law.  Second, a cops life always comes first.

Surprise, surprise.  Tar sands processing activities are contaminating groundwater.

At first, I thought it was really noble that John Duncan resigned over an issue where he improperly lobbied on behalf of a constituent.  But then I thought about it.  And he's resigned as a minister.  But he is still an MP.  And it suggests that he may have been on his way out anyhow

And here is the inevitable backlash to Justin Trudeau banking huge sums of money while making speaking engagements.  Apparently he missed Parliament "events" (votes, sittings, etc.) in order to do some of these speaking events.  So...he basically skipped out on his job to go make money elsewhere.  I think the Cons just booked an agency to start making some attack ads.  This seems like a tough one to justify.  Hey!  Justinfy!  I only wish the Sun news dug this hard into sordid Con behaviour.  Oooh....Yikes.  There's more.  Apparently one of the speeches was to federal government employees.

I'll give the National Post some credit here.  They'll pursue the Cons when they smell blood.  Pamela Wallin sounds pretty ridiculous, but why not?  Stephen Harper sees no problem with (roughly) $350,000 in travel for one Senator in a (roughly) 2-1/2 year period.  Oddly, I'm anticipating that this is going to work to Harper's benefit?  "Is it my fault that I appointed these useless buffoons?  Of course not.  We just need to reform the Senate and this will all go away."

The National Post is calling out Thomas Mulcair for his stance on International Aid.  Apparently he's not singling out enough international aid organizations for their anti-gay stance?

The Federal Government is seeking confidentiality agreements on some arctic research.  Is this another way to muzzle scientists findings on global warming?

The National Post talks about how nationalizing military procurement is a bad idea.

As always, Matt Taibi gets the blood boiling.  Here is a long piece on the failure to prosecute HSBC executives for money laundering.  I think he had a short piece up on his blog a month or two back.

Oh gawd.  We should probably just have a few credit card terminals at the border.  Let anybody in for, what?  A hundred thousand?  The Conservatives have decided that Mexico is a "safe" place and that nobody could have a valid reason to seek refugee status.  I mean, there's only been a few million people murdered there, right?  They most likely all deserved it.

This sounds similar to another story a month or so back.  The Conservative cuts seem to be affecting front line services the most.  In this case, military reserve units are seeing deep cuts that are having a big effect.

A Conservative MP has made an out-of-court settlement with a convicted money launderer over investment money not paid back.  No further elaboration required.

This article brings up a point that there are black football players in Manitoba, and even another black hockey player, that don't have the difficulties of Evander Kane.  And then points out another hockey player who is hated for his attitude.  And who is also black.  It seems to me that there is always another "reason" for a reaction other than race.  But there's probably something to a whole bunch of people claiming they hate two black hockey players not because they are black, but because they are "arrogant".  There's lots of arrogant hockey players that don't take this much shit.


I think I might have said this a few months ago, but what exactly is the "Office of Religious Freedom" supposed to do?

Grandstanding blowhards.  I remember how embarrassed I was when my then-MP Nelson Riis made a giant speech in the house of commons when Wayne Gretzky retired.  Now we've got two parties wasting time talking about the zombie apocalypse?  I'm all for lightening the mood and I tend to treat everything like it's a bit of a joke.  But I guess I draw the line with Parliament.

Kicking it up a notch - Week 89.5 - Jan 14-16

Okay.  I've been told that I'm too slow and nobody will pay attention to my long posts.  So, we'll try to ratchet things up a bit with a mid-week post.

I'm not going to pretend to know anything about Mali.  The summary of the situation seems to be "We gonna go get us some Muslim terrorists!"  Only with a French accent.  Is this good or bad?  I don't really know.  However.  It seems to me that if you're going to get involved, you should get involved.  Sending one airplane for a week seems a bit chickenshit to me.  And then when your one airplane doesn't even make it off the ground...man.

This is why you debate bills.  So they aren't deemed unconstitutional by judges.  A BC judge decides that the human smuggling bill is over-reaching.

For health reason, Shawn Atleo has stepped aside from the Association of First Nations Chiefs.  I'm picturing him sitting in a dark room someplace with a really confused look on his face, wondering what the hell just happened to him.

It turns out that until a few years ago, the RCMP had absolutely no means of tracking internal discipline.  The CBC story I heard pointed out the irony of the organization that is supposed to track national crime trends and statistics having no idea about their own internal crime trends and statistics.

Is anybody surprised that the heads of Nortel were found not guilty of fraud?  I mean, all they did was collect massive bonuses as they drove their company into bankruptcy.  That's just capitalism.  They're trendsetters, really.

Statistics - Week 66 - July 30-Aug 6

We'll start with two great bits of data.  First, this fantastic graph:

I love that the Olympics opening ceremony put public health care front and center.  It led me to this story on the Guardian.  It's very interesting.  Key points for me:

- The US spends far and away the most money on health care as a % of GDP (17.9%)...this works out to $8362 per person.  Of that money, almost half comes directly out of pocket of the individual - $4437.

- Canada spends about 11.3% of GDP on healthcare.  This works out to a total of $4404 per person and $3104 of that comes from the government.  So, our health care costs about half of what it does per person as it does in the US.  And we directly pay about 1/4 directly out of pocket as compared to the average American.

- Canada lines up quite nicely in % of GDP spending with most European nations...a bit more than Italy/Spain/UK, a bit less than France/Germany.  We all seem to be in the 9-11% of GDP range, and $3-4000 per person range

So.  What the hell?  Either the US is getting far better health coverage (I doubt it) or there's an incredible amount of waste.  And you look at the huuuuuuge disparity in what sort of coverage people have and you can only imagine what the bottom end of their spectrum looks like.

This stupid-assed headlined Globe and Mail article claims that "BC can be swayed on pipeline".  Lets see... one poll claims 35 percent agree with Adrian Dix's outright disapproval of the pipeline.  Another poll claims that 65 percent are outright opposed.  But the first poll also suggests that 43 percent agree with Christie Clark's strings-attached disapproval of the pipeline.  So, ya, really sounds like we're on the fence here and just need a little nudge in the right direction!  What a bunch of jackasses.

Speaking of pipelines, way to go David Anderson.  I think he summed up many people's feelings on Enbridge: "They should just go away."  Awesome stuff.  I'm certain Peter Kent will not be this interesting when he retires.

 Hundreds of women have come forward with complaints of sexual harassment within the RCMP.  Man.  This is going to take FOREVER for the various governments and RCMP brass to come up with justification based on them all being sluts and alcoholics.

Somebody in Jason Kenney's office made a formal complaint against an immigration lawyer who suggested they must have had something to do with Conrad Black coming back to Canada.  Great.  Professional threats against people that ask questions (well...against people that make accusations).

Stephen Harper, master of the Canadian economy.  Wasn't that his election promise?  What happened then?

Remember Attawapiskat a few months back?  A judge points out that it was a bad thing to foist a manager upon them.

Another Globe article claims that the Provinces need to stand together on bulk drug purchases.  Hmmm...lets see...a national strategy to reduce prescription drug prices....who could possibly oversee a program with National implications?